And a time came when—well, when almost I did believe that.
Later on, when Mr. Barrett stood second only to Mr. Booth in his profession, well established, well off, well dressed, polished and refined of manner, aye, and genial, too, to those he liked, I came by accident upon a most gracious act of his and, following it up, found him deep in a conspiracy to deceive a stricken woman into receiving the aid her piteous determination to stand alone made impossible to offer openly. I looked at the generous, prosperous, intellectual, intensely active gentleman, surrounded by clever wife and the pretty, thoroughly educated daughters, who were chaperoned in all their walks to and from park or music-lesson or shopping-trip, and I wondered at the distance little "Larry," with the heavy head and frail body, had traveled, and bowed respectfully to such magnificent energy.
Even then there arose a cry from the profession that Mr. Barrett was dictatorial, that he assumed airs of superiority. Mr. Barrett was wrapped up, soul and body, in the proper production of the play in hand. He was keenly observant and he was sensitive. When an actor had his mind fixed upon a smoke or a glass of beer, and cared not one continental dollar whether the play failed or succeeded, so long as he got his "twenty dollars per—," Mr. Barrett knew it, and became "dictatorial" in his effort to force the man into doing his work properly. I worked with him, both as a nobody and as somebody, and I know that an honest effort to comprehend and carry out his wishes was recognized and appreciated.
As for his airs of superiority—well, the fact is he was superior to many. He was intellectual and he was a student to the day of his death. When work at the theatre was over he turned to study. He never was well acquainted with Tom and Dick, nor yet with Harry. His back fitted a lamp-post badly. He would not have known how "to jolly the crowd." He was not a full, voluminous, and ready story-teller for the boys, who called him cold and hard. God knows he had needed the coldness and the so-called hardness, or how could he have endured the privations of the long journey from his weary mother's side to this position of honor.
Cold, hard, dictatorial, superior? Well, there is a weak lean-on-somebody sort of woman, who will love any man who will feed and shelter her—she doesn't count. But when a clear-minded, business-like, clever woman, a wife for many years, loves her husband with the tenderest sentiment and devotion, I'm ready to wager something that it was tenderness and devotion in the husband that first aroused like sentiments in the wife.
Mrs. Barrett was shrewd, far-seeing, business-like—a devoted and watchful mother, but her love for her husband had still the freshness, the delicate sentiment of young wifehood. When she thought fit, she bullied him shamefully; when she thought fitter, she "guyed" him unmercifully. Think of that! And it was delightful to see the great, solemn-eyed personification of dignity smilingly accepting her buffets.
But, oh, to hear that wife tell of the sorrows and trials they had faced together, of their absurd makeshifts, of their small triumphs over poverty, of Lawrence's steady advance in his profession, of that beautiful day when they moved into a little house all by themselves, when he became, as he laughingly boasted, "a householder, not a forlorn, down-trodden boarder!"
Their family, besides themselves, then consisted of one little girl and Lawrence's beloved old mother, and he had a room to study in in peace, and the two women talked and planned endlessly about curtains and furniture, and—oh, well, about some more very small garments that would, God willing, be needed before a very great while. And one day Lawrence looked about his little table, and said: "It's too good, it can't last, it can't!" and the women kissed him and laughed at him; yet all the time he was right, it did not last. An awful bolt seemed to fall from the blue sky. It was one of those pitiful disasters that sometimes come upon the very old—particularly to those who have endured much, suffered much, as had the elder Mrs. Barrett in the past.
I wept as I heard the story of the devoted son's dry-eyed agony, of the awful fears his condition aroused in the minds of those close to him, and then suddenly she, the wife, had been stricken down, and her danger and that of the tiny babe had brought him to his old self again.
He worked on then for some months, grateful for the sparing of his dear ones, when quite suddenly and painlessly the stricken old mother passed from sleep to life everlasting. Then when Joseph was to be summoned—Joe who worshipped the mother's footprint in the dust—he was not to be found. He had fallen again into disgrace, had been discharged, had disappeared, no one knew whither.